Wild
by Purpuhl
Summary: ' "You are too wild," she had told him, and she'd meant it. He was unstable, she couldn't trust him, so she left him standing in the village square, while she ran away with Danny to reclaim the normal life she was supposed to have, the life she wanted. ' An exploration of who Rhen is not, based on the "choose to return to Thais but then lose nerve and go to Clearwater" ending.


_I think some aspects of Rhen's character can only really be fully explored by looking at the choices she didn't take. I actually look at all of the non-canon endings for all of the games this way, I think they highlight fears and flaws the characters have which we might not notice otherwise, and they make a statement about who the character is not, but I think I might be the only one who takes analysis this far, heh. So. Here is an exploration of what the "choose to go back to Thais but bail and go to Clearwater" option means for Rhen. Notes at the end to avoid spoilers, even though really everything is pretty straightforward._

* * *

 _"You are too wild,"_ she had told him, and she'd meant it. He was unstable, she couldn't trust him, so she left him standing in the village square, while she ran off with Danny to reclaim the normal life she was _supposed_ to have, the life she wanted.

And he had gone on to Thais, like he said he would. She knew because of the address on his letter. _One letter_ , years later, when she thought she had nearly forgotten everything. It seemed almost ridiculous.

She refused to read it at first. She hid it in every corner of the house, trying to forget it but unable to throw it away. She couldn't explain why. She had told Danny it was from one of the druids— it was _almost_ true. Danny had only nodded distractedly, and headed out to explore the caves again.

As a mapmaker, he was always looking for new things. Rhen wanted only to hide, to cling to the familiar, to never open her eyes or her heart to anything different, ever again.

But the letter, it haunted her. It reminded her of _his_ dark brown eyes, staring into her, and his soft voice echoed in her head every time she shoved it into another hiding place— _But I thought you loved me_.

And she had thought she loved marionbells, and apples littering the ground, and Ma and Pa— she _did_ love those things. They made her smile.

But it was the sunrise that made her cry.

So one early morning, as she watched the light slowly spread over the mountains, she finally opened the letter— _Are you ready, Rhen?—_ and she read it, hoping maybe now she could forget, maybe now she could move past _this_. Maybe, finally, she could find peace.

 _Rhen_ , it began, and she could hear the way he said it, slowly, quietly, without any malice at all.

He told her about Thais. It was not so desolate anymore. They were rebuilding. They had blasted through the mountains and opened up a dock, there were travelers again. There were even farming villages. There was even an apple orchard.

He told her about the people. They were not angry at her. They wished her luck in all her endeavors. They hoped she had found the freedom her mother never had. They hoped she was happy.

 _Happy_. That's all she had wanted, wasn't it? To smile again, and not worry about what happened in the rest of the world. Why wasn't she smiling?

He told her, in broken, scattered sentences, what he was doing. The Priestesses had opened a hospital, _like the one in Dirkon, but without rats_. He worked there with them, and the sick and injured came to their doors, every day, unfailingly. _There is always more suffering._

He did what he could for them. Sometimes, it was not enough. _I hope they can find peace_.

She was not sure there was any of that left to be had.

 _I am sorry I could not be stable for you. I hope you are safe now. I hope you are happy._

She was safe. Nothing could get to her here. And she was happy, except when she remembered.

 _I am sorry for what you have lost._

 _Lost_ — she could only lose herself. The rest, she had never had.

 _I would restore it if I had a way._

But nothing could be done, she had been around the world and never found a cure for loss.

 _I love you._ The words were written shakily, crossed out three times only to be written again— _I love you, still, as I promised. I hope this is not painful for you. It hurts to write. It hurts more to leave it unsaid. I am not as brave as you._

 _Brave._ She had not thought of that word for a long time. Bravery was for questers, for people who didn't know what would come next, where they would go, what they would do. Bravery was not for quiet villages, or the people who hid from the world in them. It was not for her. Bravery was wild. She was tame. Or— maybe she was only caged, locked in her own fears. She was happy, sometimes. But like a captive bird, her wings were clipped.

 _You do not need to reply. I know you want to forget. I never can._

He had signed his name, and her eyes ran over the letters again and again.

 _Dameon_.

She was the wild one, wild but chained to her doubts. He was tame, but she had taken him into the wilderness and left him lost there.

She could not undo it. She only hoped his gentle heart would lead him somewhere full of light.

* * *

 _I made Danny a mapmaker because he seemed to love adventuring and going new places (ex he went to find Rhen, then almost immediately ditched her and went to Sedona, and clearly wanted to keep exploring). Which really makes their relationship so tragic because they both want what the other can't give, and they don't know it, they don't listen to each other. If they were just a little braver they could have had everything, but instead T.T_

 _And Dameon only really knows how to heal, and he had all this newfound compassion that he wouldn't know what to do with, so of course he would go into healing. Also, there is a priestess hospital in AV3 so I figured I'd reference it. And I couldn't imagine him going back to Aveyond, since he would be mortal now, but I could imagine him finishing what Rhen started. So to Thais he went._

 _And I guess Thais is still being ruled by a chancellor. Or maybe they have a democracy. I don't know, ask Dameon._

 _Edit: if you read this and don't see how absolutely tragic this ending is for Rhen I can't help you, this is not about healing. This is one of the endings where she runs and can never rest, where fear and doubt prevail, where she crushes her own heart because she thought it was sensible but it was just self-destructive. There is no hope here. Only regret._


End file.
